


together we draw pictures that we cannot see

by SnarkyLlama



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-20
Updated: 2012-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-29 20:29:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnarkyLlama/pseuds/SnarkyLlama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WIP - Ichikawa Harumi first encounters the Touya family when she's in middle school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Just before Ichikawa Harumi’s first year of middle school, her great uncle fell at the train station and broke his leg. Harumi’s mother tut-tutted over this and pointed out that her uncle had always been a bit frail. He had been sick as a child and he’d never fully recovered. Harumi’s father said that he was lucky that he had fallen on the stairs leading into the station, because he would have ended up dead had he fallen at the platform, and maybe now the stubborn old coot would finally get a new pair of glasses.

Harumi liked her great uncle, stubbornness and all. She thought it took great strength of character to insist upon maintaining one’s normal routine while burdened with a cast and a cane. Harumi, it may be admitted, read a great deal of shoujo manga and had a particular fondness for heroes and heroines who could carry on bravely in the face of adversity for epic numbers of volumes. It did not matter that her great uncle had never, even on his very best day, been considered a bishounen or anything close to one; she was on his side and would support him however she could.

That is how Harumi ended up regularly accompanying her great uncle to the Tokyo headquarters of the Japan Go Association. He liked to play in the public rooms there and occasionally catch sight of title-holders and popular high-level players. He also liked to chat for hours with other Go players and regale Harumi with long, complicated anecdotes about a game that she couldn’t even begin to understand. Some of her school friends squealed and laughed at her when they heard about it. All that time with little old men! Was she crazy?

Harumi liked it. She liked riding the train and watching the people around her and wondering about their lives. She liked sitting in the room where Great Uncle played and listening to people enjoying themselves, and when it got boring, Harumi would pick someone out of the crowd and make up stories about them in her head. They weren’t always very exciting stories, but that was okay. Sometimes someone particularly interesting would be there, like the man with the glass eye or the woman with the scar on her face or--hey, look over there! Ohmigod, that’s like the most adorable little boy ever! Look at him in his little suit! He must be like five! So cute! What is he doing here?

Well, as you can see, sometimes there were people there who were interesting enough to inspire ten, or even twenty, exciting stories. That was more than enough to make up for the duller ones.


	2. Chapter 2

Great Uncle rattled his cane against the legs of Harumi’s chair. “Ah, ah!” he said. “Look at that! Some people are still raising their children right. Start ‘em young, that’s what I always say.”

Harumi nodded absently. It was true; Great Uncle was always saying things like that. And no one was sitting with that little boy. Could he have come here alone? And was he really playing Go? He was putting black and white stones out on the board, but could you really play by yourself? Maybe his mother was one of the ladies who worked the registers at the store. Maybe he was just making pretty patterns while he waited for her. Maybe--

Great Uncle rattled his cane again. “See, Harumi? That is why you must learn to play Go. That boy needs someone to play with.”

“Yes, Uncle,” she said. He had a new reason for her every week, but this was the first time she actually considered it for a minute or two.


	3. Chapter 3

Touya Akiko attended all of her husband’s official matches from the day of their engagement until the fourth month of her pregnancy when she had to take a break and focus more on her upcoming role as a full-time mother. Most of the time, she wasn’t allowed to view the game in progress, but that was all right. She wasn’t there to watch; she was there to wait. For her, Go was not a burning passion. It was, instead, a noble romance.

Go was over a thousand years of court intrigue and emperors learning strategy. Go was her grandfather teaching her to play on a board that had been in their family for five generations. Go was her handsome and serious husband. It was his uneasy relationship with his family elders, who thought there was something distastefully modern about playing Go professionally. It was the decisive movements of his hands, hands which were otherwise so often hidden in his kimono sleeves, hands that made her grow warm when they reached for her. Go was waiting for her husband because it was the dutiful thing to do. Go was waiting for him because it was the loving thing to do. Go was, above all else, the look in his eyes when he finished a match and then saw her waiting there for him.

And more recently, Go was that feeling in her chest when she saw her beautiful and bright-eyed son sitting across from her husband at her family goban. This was something that most of her friends from her school days could not understand. Their husbands worked in offices all day. Kouyou was busy, so very busy now that he was consistently playing in five leagues and very close to a title, but he spent more time with their son while playing even a single game of Go than most fathers spent with their children in a week.

Go gave her a family that any mother would be proud of. Compared to that, it hardly mattered that her level of play was only a little higher than her son’s. And now that he was six and in school for full days, she could begin attending Kouyou’s matches again.


End file.
